If you think that word of mouth is a dead concept for marketing, you would be very wrong. It’s alive and well, even though it might look and work a bit differently. People are receiving marketing messages differently, and you are using your blog and your social media sites to push that information out to them. Those same outlets can help you with word-of-mouth marketing, and it’s easier than you might think.

Social media and online communities are really the new word of mouth, and this makes complete sense when you think about it. Most people have several social networking accounts, and it is where they go to learn about news, products, and everything that their friends have been doing. It’s a place to gossip, really, and that’s what word of mouth is all about.

You will find that people are still hesitant to make purchases before they learn more about a product or service, and they will often turn to social media to get a feel for a certain company. They ask questions and the masses respond. This is word of mouth at its finest and most basic.

How can you get in on this? It starts by becoming a part of those communities. You need to set up your social networking accounts if you haven’t already, and you need to be active on them. Some of the best sites to use include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. These are the sites where much of the action is taking place.

Make sure that you make the content that you place on your blog, and on those social networks, easily sharable. Get into conversations with people, but don’t be too pushy with your marketing message, and don’t constantly ask for retweets and reposts of your materials. It needs to be as organic and natural as possible. Let your customers and followers on those sites do your work for you and spread the word about your company. To help the process along, you may want to offer an incentive to those who help you this way, such as a discount.

Word of mouth is one of the oldest forms of advertising, and it’s still going strong. It just has a brand new set of clothes and instructions that you need to learn. Keep up with your content marketing and your social media work, and you’ll find that it often takes care of itself.